Rise of the Beast: A Novel (The Patmos Conspiracy Book 1) Page 9

  19

  Bentonville, Arkansas

  ALEXANDER’S MIND TRAVELLED BACK TO the first man he killed in cold blood. Everyone called Alexander, Jonto, at the time. He was only fifteen years old, working on a shipping vessel that was delivering cargo from Athens to Marseilles. There was a large wooden crate not listed on the manifest. Amongst the omnipresent barrels of olive oil, it concealed a few identically marked drums filled with snowy white powder wrapped in clear kilo packages. He and the man who hired him, Gabriel Lefebvre, were instructed to fit in with the other hands. There was a predetermined time and place where they would transfer the product to two men who would load the heroin on a freighter bound for Liverpool.

  Under cover of darkness and fog—a smuggler’s most beautiful kind of night—he and Lefebvre moved the heavy drums in a rowboat. The handoff went beautifully. But when they returned to their ship the second mate was waiting at the top of the ladder for them. He was also the ship’s medical doctor and watch keeping officer. Either he was personally vigilant at all hours of the night or he had been tipped off by a crewmember that Alexander and Lefebvre were up to something.

  The second mate confronted the two men alone. Big mistake. He informed them that all he wanted in return for graciously ignoring what Lefebvre and Jonto had just done was their full cut of the transaction. Every penny. He let them know they should feel lucky he hadn’t already manacled them together in the brig to turn over to the police at the next port. A bigger mistake. Despite his youth, Jonto was not someone to threaten unless you were willing and ready to act immediately. It would have been much wiser for the ship’s watch keeping officer to threaten him after he was restrained.

  Gabriel stood slack jawed and submissive. Quick as a snake, Alexander gutted the man with a switchblade, spilling his blue, gray, and purplish intestines and a bucket of bright red blood slippery goo on the deck. He wiped both sides of the knife on his pants, snapped the silvery razor-honed blade in its holder, and pocketed it.

  “What did you just do?” Gabriel whispered, dark eyes gleaming, barely able to control the quaver in his voice.

  “The only thing there was to do,” Jonto answered calmly. “The man was going to steal what is ours.”

  “Vous tromper!” Gabriel hissed, pushing Jonto backwards.

  Already playing the long game, Alexander was patient and slow to anger even at this young age, but he would not suffer anyone to call him a fool without consequence.

  The second man he murdered was Gabriel Lefebvre. Two seconds after he hissed “vous tromper!” at him, Alexander slashed Gabriel’s throat, the knife retrieved from his pocket and opened with near magical speed. Lefebvre stared at Jonto in astonishment through lifeless eyes before slumping atop the second mate on the bloody deck. Alexander took Lefebvre’s cut of the fee from the inside pocket of his oilskin windbreaker and relieved the second mate’s corpse of the generous wad of francs and other currencies in his wallet. He threw both men overboard and went back to the crew’s sleeping quarters for his rucksack. He quietly climbed down the ladder, checked that all his belongings were collected, slung the heavy pack over his shoulder, returned above deck, descended the ladder to the rowboat, untied it, and launched away from the ship, putting all his strength into a slow but steady stroke. When he stepped ashore, Jonto began the long journey back to Greece by road.

  The big boss, the man who hired Alexander after his father died wasn’t happy with him for killing Lefebvre and damaging a longstanding business arrangement. But Petrov Xenakas saw something in Alexander’s eyes that he knew could be used. By seventeen, Alexander—still named Jonathas Alexopolous and known as Jonto to his friends—was a bodyguard and enforcer for a Greek heroin smuggler.

  Alexander almost smiled when he thought of the final moment when he seized Xenakas’ empire from him, killing him with the same switchblade he had used on Lefebvre and the second mate that fateful night on the Mediterranean.

  Were there any murders he regretted? Holding the pillow over the jaundiced face of his brother, Nikolai, while he was in a drunken stupor had been a little painful. But Nikolai’s drinking and gambling habits had become too hard to manage and were costing the Alexopolous syndicate too much money. The booze had killed him already anyway. No, he didn’t regret that murder, and wasn’t sure it should be considered murder anyway.

  But now, what of Reverend Garrison? Was it bad luck to order the execution of a good luck charm?

  The man had served his purpose. All he could do now was complicate an already complicated undertaking.

  No, Garrison had to die. But perhaps when the second phase of Patmos was underway, he would build a memorial for his spiritual mentor.

  “IS EVERYTHING OKAY, SIR?” THE driver asked.

  “What could be wrong on such a lovely fall day?” Alexander responded pleasantly. Inside he was irritated that his state of mind was so easy to read—and that he was being studied with perhaps a flicker of recognition. He was preoccupied and hadn’t replaced his sunglasses and hat. He needed Jules at his side.

  “You are right on that. It is a beautiful fall. I apologize for asking, sir.”

  “No apologies, please, that was kind of you to ask,” Alexander answered smoothly. “And it was kind of you to be so accommodating to drive Jules out to meet our friend at the trailhead.”

  “Just my job, sir. Very happy to do so. Is one of our drivers coming back for them or is another service picking them up? I heard Samuel, her driver, was given the last part of the day off. Heck, I could drive back down there myself if no one is scheduled yet.”

  “Again. That is kind of you …” Alexander located the man’s name on his printed itinerary … “Charles. But your offer won’t be necessary. We’ve made other arrangements.”

  Alexander pulled his sunglasses from his lapel pocket and pushed them over his nose. He kept his face pointed straight forward but watched the driver’s eyes dart nervously between the road and the rearview mirror. The chauffeur’s eyebrows moved back and forth, up and down, in a rhythm of deep thought. He is trying very hard to figure something out, Alexander thought. I don’t like to be presumptuous, but I suspect he wonders why I look familiar and who I am.

  “So you’ll be going to the airport alone, sir?” the driver queried.

  Today is not the day to have a driver who is curious and inquisitive, Alexander thought. Particularly with Pauline wounded and at large. Jules would do all he could to reacquire her but there was a vast expanse of territory to cover. The trail Klaus found for her was in a state park consisting of thousands of acres. The problem was exacerbated in that it abutted the Ozark National Forest. Pauline had become the proverbial needle in a haystack. Support, including men and drones, was en route, but a lot could happen before their arrival throughout the evening.

  He looked forward. Charles was circumspectly watching him in the rearview mirror. He needed to assuage the driver’s meddlesome concern.

  “My traveling companion has been training for her first triathlon. As soon as she started up the trail, she became quite taken by the scenery and topography of your area. I suggested she stay over a couple days to take advantage of this lovely setting.”

  “I’ve never understood those distance runners,” the driver commented. “My daughter ran cross country in high school. It looked like nothing but pain and sweat to me.”

  “I could not agree with you more, Charles. Triathletes, marathoners, and the like are different animals. Once she decided to stay for some altitude and hill training, she insisted it begin with today’s run. Young people are so bold and fearless. I had to insist with her that Jules remain to make sure she’s safe and to organize suitable accommodations for her stay. I would love to stay over myself, but business calls.”

  I’m afraid I need to give another task to Jules, Alexander thought. Jules knows how to simulate a fatal heart attack and another dozen ways to make a death look like natural causes. But he must move fast and still be particularly circumspect as we are
on foreign soil and have other acute problems to wrap up.

  Alexander’s mind began to take inventory of the day.

  Reverend Garrison, I thank you for your spiritual counsel. You were most helpful today even if I am still not sure if God, if he indeed exists, will work on my behalf. If he doesn’t or if he works against me, I know the one who will cover my efforts with spiritual protection. I am sorry the blessing you provided for me will cost you so much. But great deeds require great sacrifices.

  Pauline, you were a bad girl. But be assured, Jules will find you. Not even I want to know all that he will do to you.

  Alexander almost smiled. Then he furrowed his brow. No one was supposed to know he was in Northwest Arkansas. His publicist made sure a few members of the paparazzi knew he had landed in Nice, France, with a young runway model from Milan. His publicist actually believed that was true. As did the runway model. Alexander didn’t hold the prejudice that pretty girls weren’t smart, but in this case, she was clueless that the man who was wining, dining, and bedding her, was Alexander’s doppelgänger. But others, undoubtedly enemies, now knew better.

  Loose ends are annoying … but inevitable. So no matter. Every day has its problems. Nothing we can’t handle. We knew this was going to be arduous, so nothing has changed.

  CHARLES, THE CHAUFFEUR, KEPT HIS eyes on the road. He made a conscience effort to stop glancing at the man behind him. He chewed on his lower lip, a nervous habit his wife hated, as he tried to sort out the day’s events.

  His passenger’s words on his companion—I think we know what kind of companion she is—wanting to stay over for further training were strange. The deadly, blond gorilla told him she was going to take it easy because she wasn’t feeling well. She wanted to go straight back to the jet and wait for another car after she walked back to the trailhead.

  I told him it was best for me to wait at the trailhead and send another car for the old man, but the bodyguard insisted I come back to the church. That didn’t make sense either.

  Despite his concerted efforts to keep his eyes straight ahead, Charles looked at his passenger in the rearview mirror yet again. He couldn’t see the man’s eyes through the darkened lenses, but he felt an intense eye contact with the man, whoever he was.

  I should know his name. I’ve seen him before.

  Charles felt a prickly tickle run from his scalp to the back of his neck. He released an involuntary shudder of fear that raced from the top of his head to the tips of his toes.

  Why is he staring at me? What is he thinking? Who is this creepy guy? It feels like he is in my mind.

  20

  Arlington, Virginia

  “ANY CHANCE WE GOT EVERYTHING?” Grayson asked.

  “If Alexander wrote only eleven pages in his journal then we for sure got it all,” answered the young man furiously tapping on a keyboard in front of a wall of monitors.

  “I’m not in the mood for your sarcasm,” Grayson snarled. He didn’t like the informal communication style of young people today, which was anyone under forty in his book. He particularly didn’t like this young man’s constant stream of flippant remarks. He missed his days in the United States Army when he could plant a boot where the sun didn’t shine to cure a young man of his character and attitudinal deficiencies.

  “Sorry, sir. What I meant to say is what we already know. The transmission stopped on a page that was in midsentence. Right after it started. Our man didn’t get all of it.”

  “So no chance the satellite connection was broken and we’ll get the rest later?” Grayson asked as he ran a hand over the gray stubble of his military haircut. Ramrod straight, he was a compact five-eight and one-hundred-and-sixty pounds of muscle and sinew that belied his sixty-two years of age.

  “No sir. Not a couple hours after it started. At least I don’t think so,” Mark Doyle, the mid-thirties, nearly emaciated programmer answered, wanting to roll his eyes and say something smart, but wisely resisting.

  “Diagnostics showed everything arrived at burst speed fine,” Doyle continued. “Nothing else was sent. Nothing is lost in the Deep Web,” he added.

  He knew Colonel Grayson—the man loved the title so much he had made Colonel his first name—was very proud that he knew about the part of the Internet that was not indexed by common search engines and where Doyle and other hackers and spies did much of their work. Doyle gave Grayson just enough information to make him feel like he understood something he was totally ignorant about.

  After a pause, Doyle mustered his courage to continue, “There’s one other thing I’ve discovered, sir.”

  What now Grayson wondered.

  “I don’t like the way you’re saying ‘one other thing,’” he said softly, but in what he knew from experience was a menacing tone.

  Doyle had grown inured to the old man’s temper and tirades but did his best to look scared. The colonel liked intimidating people. Doyle would love to give the old man “one more thing” but the old fart paid him too much to stir that hornet’s nest. Maybe he would screw with the colonel’s credit cards when this contract was up.

  “Well?” Grayson asked calmly.

  “We’re not the only ones that got the transmission, sir.”

  “What?!” Grayson bellowed, the calm instantly replaced by rage.

  Here we go again, thought Doyle. Rant and rave like your hair is on fire. I can wait. I hope you pop a blood vessel and send a clot to your brain.

  After a pause, Doyle said politely, “It’s got to be your operative, sir. He was the only one that could have created a back door in our program. It was in his possession for more than nine months.”

  Burke. What game was he playing? Grayson asked himself, his eyes burning holes into the soul of his computer hack.

  Grayson was one of the few men in the world that knew the real identity of the shadowy international fixer. He had followed the career of the man who had once served under his command with interest and admiration. At times he almost thought of Burke as the son he never had. Grayson actually had a son, an attorney, but he didn’t really care for him. Too soft. Grayson sent business Burke’s way on a regular basis. He didn’t think Burke had a clue that the steady stream of work that flowed his way was anything but organic.

  But this was the first time he had employed him directly. What a disappointment. He knew the task was herculean, near impossible, but based the Burke’s previous—and sometimes improbable—successes, Grayson thought Burke had the tenacity and savvy to pull it off. What a miscalculation. The time it had taken Burke to reach the point where he screwed up the acquisition of Alexander’s secrets was ridiculous. It wouldn’t be a reflection on Burke with Grayson’s employer. His employer didn’t know about Burke. It would shine a spotlight squarely on him. Unacceptable. Burke’s failure was ultimately his own failure. The buck always stopped at the top.

  What had gone wrong? Why was such a simple task so hard? Grayson didn’t know every detail of the operation, but had kept his eyes and ears on the basics from a distance, and knew Burke had laid a classic honey trap for Alexander.

  Why do smart men fall so easily for pretty girls?

  Little did Burke know that Grayson had helped him with that detail.

  Alexander’s life was so structured and guarded that getting into the journal was impossibly slow work, which magnified the failure to secure anything more than a prologue—a strange, rambling, insane prologue—of what Alexander was planning next in his illustrious international career.

  “I will ride the blood red horse of the Apocalypse? I will be the Beast?”

  What the hell was Alexander planning to do? Grayson wondered. Get saved? Start a religion? If so, the man had a peculiar understanding of faith. The tortured prose made it sound like he had plans to wipe out more than half the earth’s population. Was he experiencing dementia? There was a rumor Alexander suffered a stroke in the past few years. The scribbling in his diary had nothing to do with business plans as Grayson’s client had led him to believe
would be the case. The mumbo jumbo in the opening pages of that leather journal was crazy talk. He started with a computerized translation of the script and then had a Georgetown linguistics professor who was fluent in Classical, Koine, and Modern Greek, rush over to make sure he got the translation right. Grayson read the corrected words at least ten times. They made little practical sense, unless the man really was planning mass genocide, which you never knew with an ego the size of Alexander’s. Was he? If so, he was a fool. That couldn’t be right. The man was not stupid. He knew math.

  If countries with nearly unlimited budgets couldn’t figure a way to eliminate a couple billion undesirables, how could one man? Sure he was the rich of the rich. But even if he threw ten or twenty or whatever billion dollars he had sitting around at the task, that would only go so far as was evidenced in Washington, D.C., which couldn’t get a bang for a trillion bucks, home of his longtime employer at the Pentagon, and the source of most of his work as an independent contractor in the world of international espionage.

  Doyle watched Grayson’s face contort in agitation. It was almost amusing. He waited silently for his next orders.

  Grayson looked over and their eyes met. What about the kid? Doyle, the MIT grad, was plenty smart. When it came to computer programming he was a genius. He definitely needed a sandwich and some exercise if he was going to get rid of the death camp survivor look. Poor guy. Wonder if he’s ever had a date, much less got laid. I should have at least got him a hooker to help realign his maladjusted outlook on life. Might have knocked some of that sarcasm out of him.

  A genius, but apparently Doyle was not bright enough to protect the operation from the only thing that mattered. Other eyes. Traces of what they had done. Grayson was working for a whale who was himself dangerous. But not as dangerous as the man he wanted Grayson to extract information from. A much larger whale with the teeth of great white shark. There was a reason he had subbed out the project to Burke. Grayson wanted to stay nimble if something went wrong. And it looked like something had gone seriously wrong.